1. Field
This disclosure relates to network devices on networks that carry both voice and data traffic, more particularly to network devices that manage incoming call requests.
2. Background
Many enterprises have discovered that they can use excess capacity in their data networks to carry voice traffic. Voice over data networks, whether that data network is an Internet Protocol (IP) network, a Frame Relay (FR) network, or an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network, is often referred to as Voice over IP (VoIP). For purposes of discussion here, VoIP will be used, even if it refers to other types of data networks.
Typically, a voice signal is encoded and packetized by specialized by end equipment and then routed through a network device across the data network to the call destination, where it is converted back to speech. The packets of voice data will be referred to as voice traffic to differentiate it from data traffic, even though both types of traffic are packetized and transmitted as data. As mentioned previously, the packets may be IP packets, ATM cells or FR frames, among other types of discrete bundles of data.
When data networks are used for a mix of data and voice, many problems may arise. This is especially true in the administration realm, for accounting, authorization and service level agreement (SLA) enforcement. For example, a particular customer may have authorization for 65,000 calls on a given wholesale network. Current implementations typically only track incoming dial calls. If there is a resource management system in place, typically only the incoming dial calls are posted to the resource management system. In this situation, ports that should be retained for dial calls, to meet dial SLAs, may be inadvertently consumed by voice calls. The voice calls may be VoIP calls traveling through a voice gateway, or even calls received through a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), which typically enter the data network through a call gateway. PSTN calls are what may otherwise be referred to as ‘standard’ or ‘traditional’ phone calls.
Therefore, it would be useful to have an apparatus and method to track and, if desired, post voice calls prior to their completion to ensure that dial SLA commitments can be met.